I was a child training my brain to be accepted in a "normal" world, unaware I was even capable of this.

   Over time the condition became an individual and is referred to as HER. I live with what is almost a split personality. A twin, even if an evil one.

    Later in years I created a system I call BRAIN COFFINS to help me clear the brain clutter I live with daily and BRAIN BRAKES to enable a softer landing after the extreme highs.

    Read BEFORE IT HAD A NAME to find out why I choose not to use medication to this day, how keeping HER in the Lord's light makes living easier for me and those around me, how life's tragedy from my son's crib death to life in general impacted me and HER. Last, but not least, read about my HERO who taught me, again, how to laugh at myself and make the dark hidden den of HER not so desolate and lonely...

HEARTBREAK ~ CHALLENGES ~ VICTORIES

An excerpt from Chapter Eight


   I'm like a child lost in the
dark.  Where does a woman in her
late thirties begin to find out
who she is?  My sons are reaching
for their adult journeys and I have
to re-raise myself.  I started by
visualizing myself as so many new
building blocks.  Each one I place
will be a strong solid foundation
for the base of me, a new, clean
and clear core of a person.  I
wanted a decisive, independent,
strong, whole, and joy filled
woman.  I wanted it all.  I still
strive for these, some accomplished,
others not...yet. 
   I grew up with the “dumb blonde”,
wacky Jacquie jokes, teased un-
mercifully growing up about being
flat chested, knock kneed, and naïve.
I was told I was beautiful but little
did my mom know that each time she'd
introduce me to someone in our home
she'd tell me to go put on my make-up
so they could see how pretty I was. 
What I heard was I'm not pretty,
make-up is.  Now I don't feel pretty,
shaped well, or intelligent, and why
go for future careers when we were
raised, then, to believe you married
and had children?